


In Negative

by blanketed_in_stars



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:52:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanketed_in_stars/pseuds/blanketed_in_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dennis Creevey takes photographs.</p>
<p>(Drabble, 500 words)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Negative

Dennis Creevey takes photographs. He uses the same camera, though it’s nearly falling apart now, long past its natural life and only held together with half a dozen spells. He snaps pictures of everything he comes across—interesting stones, the birds on the windowsill, an old house in a little town in Wales. Sometimes his own face. Sometimes, rarely, their father.

Home isn’t a place he goes very often anymore. He thinks their father understands, but he’s not sure—he’s never been one for talking. Neither of them were. It was Colin who spoke, chattering enough to fill the silence ten times over. Without him the empty spaces yawn wide and threaten to swallow them whole. So Dennis avoids home and takes photographs of the road, develops them in the right potion, and sends them back.

Some he sends to the _Prophet,_ because he has to, because it’s his job. Why is it his job? He doesn’t know. Most of his decision to be a photographer was made in the hazy days after the war when he hadn’t learned how to smile or laugh or breathe, really, in the quiet. He went home and the camera sat on the formica counter and called his name in a voice that sounded like his brother’s. The metal didn’t have a smell, but Dennis knew that if it did, it would smell like Colin, his favorite jam and that shampoo he bought in bulk from the Muggle store so he never ran out at school. And the camera didn’t have eyes, but when Dennis looked through the viewfinder, he imagined he could see Colin’s soul. Maybe just the world as Colin saw it—but isn’t that the same thing?

He remembers the first picture he took and the day he took it—September 1st, 1998. He went back to Hogwarts for his fourth year, a year too old, though it felt like a thousand. He looked up at the castle with its turrets and ghosts and raised the camera to his face, captured the moment and pretended that his brother had done it. That made everything easier.

Now, though, he can’t pretend. Colin never cared to photograph Wizengamot meetings or delegates from the Merpeople, Gobstones tournaments or the newest self-stirring cauldron. Dennis knows that what he’s doing now would never have interested him, but he hopes Colin wouldn’t mind that he’s using his camera. Sometimes at night, he tries to ask, but the words turn to dust and he pries himself from the mattress to pad into the darkroom, check the potion, make sure he’s doing it right.

Whenever he does make it home to the little house in Tavistock, his father smiles and bakes bread. There’s little enough work for a milkman these days, but he doesn’t talk about that—doesn’t talk at all. Together they sit in the kitchen and spread jam on warm slices while Colin’s face beams from a dozen frames on every wall, and they inhale the silence.


End file.
